The Golden Road, Jean-Baptiste Sauvage, 2019

Production: Les Quinconces-L'espal / Piacé le radieux, Bézard-Le Corbusier

During the spring of 2019, Jean-Baptiste Sauvage travelled along the "Route d'Or", the name once given to a stretch of road between Le Mans and Piacé. A painting on the wall of a car garage in Beaumont-sur-Sarthe caught his eye. It was a very schematic representation of a road, with a yellow triangle at its centre, a reference to the colour gold. The artist was interested in this representation and its highly pictorial nature. He borrowed the formal characteristics of this painting and transferred it to the gable of a house in Piacé, changing the scale. A monumental work, visible from the main road, it refers to the history of a region, while at the same time inscribing that history in our contemporary world. The artist is continuing his research into landscapes, and more specifically horizons, through painting that takes advantage of a given environment and circumstances.